The AMSA Book Discussion group is scheduled to read The House of Hope and Fear: Life in a Big City Hospital for discussion on July 24. This is mostly amusing because the book is not scheduled to be released until August 1. I admit, those of us that read in medical school are an efficient bunch, but even we can't read things before we get them. If I was determined to have Dr. Young, the author as one of the speakers in this series, I might have suggested waiting until the book actually came out, or using her earlier book, What Patient's Taught Me: A Medical Student's Journey but who am I to judge. (In all fairness, that book could be awful, I haven't read it yet, but it's coming to me with love from the Cincinnati Public Library, so I'll let you know.)
Instead, it seems like the discussion is going to focus on writing in general (apparently including a writing exercise) and a JAMA article she wrote a couple of years ago "The Hospitalist's Story" JAMA, Nov 1, 2006, vol 296, pp 2067-68. That article, thankfully, is available now (at least to those of us who have easy access to JAMA).
I can't actually attend this webinar, because when it takes place I will be in Colorado for the MD/PhD conference. I'm a little bummed about this, because I feel like the discussion that involves a writing exercise might be the one that I would most enjoy, but I don't think that there's anything that I can do about it except hope that I can access it online after the fact. Such is the life of a busy person.
I did download the article though, it's interesting enough, about working with patients with chronic illness who seem to use the emergency room and the hospital as their primary (and in many cases, only) healthcare, and the frustrations that come with treating indigent patients, and with people dying from things that should be treatable or preventable with good primary care that they seem unwilling or unable to access. Nothing revolutionary, but generally interesting.
What I really want to talk about though is not the article. Instead I would like to take you inside my head for a moment and talk about a little problem that I like to call "The Never-Ending Reading Train."
My interaction with this article provides an excellent example of this particular issue that I have with life. Here's how it happens:
1.) I get the email about this book discussion webinar, glance at it, realize that I can't attend, but because I am thinking about taking the reins on getting groups together to talk about medical humanities at school, I decide to see if I can get the book from the library.
2.) I run a search for the book on the library webpage, don't find it, but do find another by the same author, which I place on hold before I go back to the email to see how recently the actual discussion book came out. I notice that it's not out yet, and that instead they'll be discussing the article.
3.) I go to PubMed find the article, download it and take a look. The pdfs of articles from JAMA have an extra title page, and this one has a feature which I have never noticed, under the topics listing, there is a link which reads "Contact Me when new articles are published on this topic" which in this case happens to be "Humanities."
4.) I click on this link, thinking that it will be glorious if JAMA emails me when they are going to print interesting things. I am taken to a page where I am able to select from a LONG list all the topics that I would like automatic emails about. Reading down the list, I choose all the topics that seem particularly likely to produce blog or discussion/debate worthy articles (ethics, policy, humanities), as well as my particular areas of medical interest, psychiatry and neurology. The resulting list is not a short one. Subscrbe.
5.) I go back to the article, read it, and then realize that it is a part of a recurring series "A Piece of My Mind" which seems to be short essay type articles about a number of issues in medicine, just the sort of thing that I like.
6.)I run a PubMed Search for the article series, and begin looking through the past options to see if any are particularly interesting.
7.)I read the first paragraphs of six or seven, all the way through 5 others, and download three that I think I might want to come back to in blogging or reflection.
So what's happened here? I got an email, and that email has led me to two books, five or six articles read, four actually downloaded articles, three blog entry ideas and a subscription to email lists that will inevitably lead to hundreds more articles and emails just like the one that started all this.
This is not an isolated incident. I think that if I stopped what I was doing right now, and committed to reading, full time, for the next five years, I still wouldn't get through my current, "To Read" pile. Maybe not ten years, maybe not for the rest of my life. And for someone that wants to write, I find the writing portion of the deal sometimes doesn't happen, gets lost in my idea that I need to read EVERYTHING on a topic before I can write ANYTHING. I don't think that it's a good way to go, but it has it's advantages. I found wonderful books and very interesting articles on the third or fourth cars of one of these trains of thought. And I would be lying if I claimed not to enjoy the process… but where's the limit? Or where should it be?
Or course, if I knew the answer to that question, my browser window might not be complicated by two New York Times articles in tabs kept open for possible future blogging. My list of library books might be much shorter, but I also might be missing things that have really spoken to me.
I'm not sure how to balance it, because there's not enough time in the world, and this really is the prime example of how my particular road to my particular hell (the ring of always, always feeling like I am behind) is paved with the very best of intentions.
I am reminded of Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (one of my favorite books of all time) and a quotation that I will have to hunt down later that pretty much sums it up.
Which reminds me, I'd like to read the rest of Calvino...
